LinkStar: The Hub

The central station consists of a large antenna (typically 6 meters in diameter), transmit and receive RF equipment, as well as transmit and receive Hub Common Equipment (HCE). The transmit HCE consists of a router to interface to the external IP network, a DVB-IP encapsulator to embed the IP data into an MPEG-2 format, a DVB multiplexer, a continuous modulator, and a timing clock .

The receive HCE consists of a timing and distribution and multiple MF-TDMA demodulator units for each inbound carrier to be received simultaneously. Each demodulator receives an inbound link from a number of remote RCSTs. The number of optional demodulators depends on the number of inbound links.